


Georgetown

by AllmyotherOTPs



Category: The Good Wife (TV)
Genre: F/M, Georgetown, Law School, What Could Have Been
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2020-10-17 06:56:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20616851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllmyotherOTPs/pseuds/AllmyotherOTPs
Summary: «It was love at first sight.For him, anyway.»Will and Alicia have always had bad timing.





	1. The pool party

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I’m very late to the party, but I recently found The Good Wife on Netflix, and I’ve been bingeing ever since. I just can’t get these two out of my head.

It was love at first sight.

For him, anyway.

Much later, Will would realize that even though he’d _thought_ he had been in love before he met her – multiple times, in fact, both in high school and in college – he hadn’t. Not really. And the women in his bed– the _many_ women in his bed – who came after her… Sure, they had been fun to be around, and yes – he had mostly cared. He had even cared a lot for some of them.

But he would eventually come to realize that _love_ – love was different.

There was only ever Alicia.

* * *

He first sees her from across the pool at orientation week. A student in their class, a Brad something or other, has invited everyone home for a midnight pool party. Will thought it had sounded pretty ambitious at first – inviting a hundred law students, some probably with partners or friends, to your home.

“Home” turns out to be a mansion, so perhaps the party isn’t that ambitious at all, really. Will realizes that first of all, he needs to find out Brad’s last name. And then he needs to get to know his new classmate better. It never hurts to have influential friends. He figures that’s one of the perks of going to law school at an elite university.

Will arrived early, having heard rumors that there are free drinks. And sure enough, there are. He is already well into his fourth free beer when she arrives. He has located three cute, blonde classmates, all of them drinking colorful drinks, and he is shamelessly flirting with the cutest of them. Okay, so he _does_ technically have a girlfriend, but it’s not as if he is banging what’s-her-name. He is just getting to know one of his fellow students. A student who happens to be female and look really good in a silver bikini. It is orientation week, after all.

Besides, Cathy has gotten into the master’s program in psychology at UCLA. And he is by a pool on a different coast, with a cold, free beer in his hand. There is a steadily growing number of gorgeous female classmates in bikinis, too.

He could get used to this.

Will makes sure to stand facing the entrance, to keep track of the new arrivals. Just in case. And that’s when he sees her, while what’s-her-name’s friend is (endlessly) talking about her trip to France this summer.

She arrives alone. She is more modestly dressed than the majority of the other women there, who have mostly stripped down to their bikinis already. She is wearing a green summer dress that ends just above her knees. He can see the strap of the bikini she wears underneath the dress, it has slipped off her right shoulder. Her curly hair – dark brown, or maybe black, it’s hard to see because of the lights – is pulled into a loose ponytail. Her feet are bare. She is medium height, slim, and she looks a bit awkward as she accepts a drink. She smiles to whoever gave the drink to her, and for a split second, his heart seems to skip a beat. Then she continues walking towards the pool area, and he sees how her right hand clutches the skirt of her dress nervously as she looks around, maybe looking for someone she knows, or at least someone she has talked to before.

He quickly mutters an excuse to the girls he has been talking to, and hurries around the pool, his eyes transfixed on the green dress. As he gets closer, he notices her perfectly plucked eyebrows, the lip gloss on her full lips, and the swell of her breasts under the two thin layers of fabric. He opens his mouth to say something to her – a greeting, a compliment, anything.

That’s the exact moment when he stumbles and falls, spilling his beer all over her feet.

Fuck, Will, you are such a moron.

She laughs – a dark, deep laugh that seems to vibrate through his spine. “It’s only a quarter to midnight,” she says. “A bit early for getting _this_ drunk, don’t you think?”

Blushing, he gets up. Thankfully his drink hasn’t gotten on her dress, only her feet, but still... Fuck. She takes a few steps to the side, away from the pool of beer, holding one of her feet up. A few drops are running down her toes. He blinks a couple of times in an attempt to focus, as he imagines himself licking those toes clean, before he licks his way further up her leg to...

He needs to think about something else, fast. Or he is going to make an even bigger fool of himself. He quickly and – he hopes – discreetly adjusts his swim shorts, and looks up at her face, smiling. Mask back on.

“Nah,” he laughs back. “This is just me scheming to sue the owner of this mansion to pay my way through law school.”

He meets her eyes. Her pupils are huge in the dark, her eyes look almost black. She licks her lips, her smile widening.

He has never seen anything lovelier in his life.

“Alicia.” She stretches out her hand. He takes it. Her hand is small and warm in his.

“Will.”


	2. What she really thought

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So - what did Alicia really think when she met Will for the first time? Why was that conversation in 1x23 dangerous?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thank you to Pati for helping me out with the episode in which Will and Alicia talk about the first time they met. Turns out I didn't remember all the details - the pool party where they met was at midnight, but in my original version of chapter one, the pool party took place during the day. Consequently, I have rewritten chapter one, so you might want to reread it before you move on to chapter two. I've changed a few other things as well.
> 
> I have changed the story rating, too. I guess I'm unable to write fics without an explicit rating... *lol*  
I didn't include any triggers in chapter one, but now that I have had the time to plan the plot, I need to add a few: Excessive drinking, adultery, abortion.

“Nice to meet you.” Will smiles apologetically. “Sorry about the beer.” There’s a brief silence, bordering on awkward, as he runs his hand through his hair, and Alicia bites her lip. He’s only wearing swim shorts, and she’s not really used to meeting people for the first time when they’re… not wearing a shirt.

Especially not when their upper body is… not bad. Not bad at all. He’s lean, but muscular, and she guesses he must be an athlete. Soccer maybe, or baseball. His chest isn’t shaved, so he can’t be a swimmer. In fact, he has the perfect amount of hair on his chest – not too much, but not too little either.

Focus, Alicia. Focus.

He nods towards her glass. “So how’s the sweet, sticky drink they only give to the girls?”

She blinks quickly. It takes her a second to understand, as she tears her eyes away from his chest. “It’s… interesting. But with alcohol. What student would say no to a free drink, right?”

“A very rich one?” He offers, gesturing towards the mansion.

“Well, I’m obviously not one of them.” She takes a sip of her drink, even though it’s too sweet. “I’m actually more of a red wine person.”

“Oh, so you’re too classy for beer, huh?”

She looks down at the beer which is still dripping from her foot, and laughs. She takes a few steps to the side, away from the beer. “No, frankly, I got sick as a dog in my freshman year after drinking beer. I haven’t touched it since.“

She certainly hadn’t planned on telling him _that_ story, but he just laughs. “Until now, I guess.” He winks, grabbing another beer from a passing waiter.

“I’m not sure I dare to be in your vicinity when you’re holding a beer bottle.”

He chuckles, but he looks embarrassed as he quickly glances down at the pool of beer by her feet for a split second, giving her a perfect view of his roman nose. It should look a bit too big for his face, perhaps, but it doesn’t. If it weren’t such a cliché, she’d say his nose gives his face character.

He clears his throat. “So… Why law?” He takes a sip of beer. 

She’s surprised by his quick change of topic, but shrugs. “I want to catch the bad guys, I guess.”

“So you’re thinking about becoming a prosecutor?”

“I don’t know yet,” she says honestly. There are so many reasons why she chose law. The wishes of her father. Her own sense of justice, of wanting things to make _sense_. Perhaps – secretly – hoping to please her mother. Or piss her off. She’s not quite sure. “You?”

“Oh, I’m just in it for the money,” he grins and winks.

After a few more beers, he does the bomb. She supposes it’s childish – doing the bomb like he’s 14 when they are supposed to be serious, adult law students at an elite university - but his enthusiasm is contagious. He gets a few others to do the same, including one of the girls he was talking to when she arrived.

“Hey, Alicia, jump in!” he shouts from the pool, but she shakes her head. She doesn’t want to take her dress off - not here, in front of everyone. Especially not in front of that blonde who’s at least three bra sizes larger than her, who doesn’t care what others think of her, and who doesn’t mind sharing Will’s beer with him in the pool.

“You know Will Gardner?”

“Mary!” Alicia turns around, relieved to see her roommate.

“Sorry I’m late, I got held up at work. But I guess you’re okay – you’ve made a new friend already?” Mary raises her eyebrow, nodding towards the pool.

Alicia shrugs, glad the darkness is hiding her blush. “You know him?”

“I don’t know him, but I know _of_ him,” Mary says. “We took English lit together a few years ago. We never really talked, though. I’m not his type.”

“His type?”

Mary raises an eyebrow. “The leggy type. Like that blonde over there. Like you.”

She watches Will getting splashed in the face by the undoubtedly leggy girl. “Be careful there, Alicia,” Mary says. “Will Gardner was the biggest man whore on campus when we were undergrads.”

Alicia bites her lip, but doesn’t say answer. 


	3. Cavanaugh & Gardner

He will always be grateful for the midnight pool party.

Because of that party, Will ends up sitting next to Alicia in their first class. Both are secretly relieved to know someone they can sit with, a familiar face in a sea of mostly (intimidating) strangers. He doesn’t know where that friend of hers from the pool party is - the dark-haired, tiny girl who looked vaguely familiar, although he couldn’t quite place her. 

Alicia’s hair turns out to be dark brown, not black. He wasn’t sure yesterday. But here, in the lecture hall, with the sunshine coming through the tall, classic windows, there is no doubt. Her curls are definitely dark brown.

And because they sit together, they end up working together on their first assignment too. Which leads to several late nights with their books – thick books with stiff pages and still with that new book smell - in Alicia’s tiny apartment. He finds out that her friend at the party was Mary, her roommate, who Alicia knows from high school, and who’s doing a master’s in Biology. Alicia just snuck her into the party because she didn’t want to go there alone.

“So you’re quite the rebel, huh?” He says. “And here I was, thinking you were a good girl.” She laughs. He loves her laughter. Alicia doesn’t laugh that often, but when she does, her laughter is unreserved, deep, and it makes something in his belly tingle. He does everything to coax that laughter out of her.

On Friday night, their studying is supplemented by a few bottles of red wine from Alicia’s cupboard. The wine is cheap, because she’s a student on a tight budget - but after a couple of glasses, it starts to taste almost as good as the bottles he used to steal from his father’s wine cellar back in high school. She tells him about her boyfriend, Rob, who got a job in Atlanta after graduating from college with a degree in business this spring. He’s not surprised that she has a boyfriend – she hasn’t outright told him before, but he has read through the lines. He’s glad she doesn’t look directly at him as she tells him though, because he’s pretty sure he doesn’t hide his disappointment very well initially. But she does look up, his poker face is thankfully back on.

When he asks her if she’s planning to move to Atlanta after law school, she shrugs. “I don’t know…” She empties her glass of wine, and pours herself another one. It’s her fourth glass. They are both getting drunk. “Three years is a long time. To tell you the truth, I don’t know what I want to do after I graduate.”

He lets out a breath he didn’t realize he’d held.

“What about you?” She asks. He knows she’s not asking about his plans after graduation.

“Cathy. Grad school at UCLA.”

“Law?”

“Psychology.”

“How did you meet?”

“We met in high school, actually. We didn’t go to the same college, but we hooked up a few of times over the years, and we still hang out with the same people when we’re home, and then, I guess…” He trails off, realizing that it doesn’t really sound like the most romantic story in the world. Which it isn’t, he supposes. He also realizes that he doesn’t really sound that committed to the relationship. He’s not really sure about that part himself yet. “We’ve been together since spring break,” he adds.

“And… are you moving to LA after Georgetown?”

This time, he’s the one who shrugs. “I told you I just want to make lots of money, and the best way of doing that, is to start my own law firm. I haven’t really thought about where yet.” 

“I bet you can make loads of money in LA. You can represent botched plastic surgery patients,” she says with a devilish grin.

“Well, I kinda want to go all in. Represent people who are being innocently accused of being murderers and that sort of thing.”

She raises an eyebrow. “And what about the guilty ones?”

“I _particularly_ want to represent the guilty murderers.” He grins. “What could possibly be more fun than murder cases? I need more action than plastic surgery gone bad, come on. I'd be bored out of my mind.” 

She laughs again. “I guess you would.” There’s something in her voice that he can’t quite interpret. 

“You should join me and my murder trial firm, Alicia. Gardner & Cavanaugh. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?”

She purses her lips. “Not as good as Cavanaugh & Gardner.”

He cocks his head, looking at her. She’s sitting with her feet curled up under her, dressed in faded jeans and a Georgetown t-shirt she bought yesterday. A few strands of hair have escaped from her ponytail, and her face is devoid of make-up. She’s so beautiful, and so close, and so taken. And besides, she’s doing really well on that assignment so far. If they get an A, he knows it will be because of her. He bets she’ll be an amazing lawyer.

“I can be the good cop, and you can be the bad cop,” she offers.

He reaches out his right hand. “It’s a deal.”

Her warm hand is so small in his, but her handshake is firm.

After, she lifts her glass in a toast. “To Cavanaugh & Gardner.”

“Cavanaugh & Gardner.”

He tops up their glasses before they continue working on their assignment.


End file.
